O, Death
by PainapplePrincess
Summary: "Fearing death is normal for people. It means letting go. Leaving. Unwilling change. A void. All living things naturally cling to life." 2x3, hints of 5xCathy **companion piece to Family Circus**


::::::::::

_But what is this that I can't see_

_With ice cold hands taking hold of me?_

::::::::::

Cathy isn't sure what wakes her at first, until her sleep-hazed mind clears and she registers the strong hands stroking her pregnant belly gently. Smiling, she sighs, leaning forward to press a kiss to her husband's forehead tenderly, before relaxing back into his arms.

Into...his arms...

Into...

"Beautiful, isn't he?" Duo breathes in her ear when her eyes snap open again. "Shh," he soothes, palms pressing against her belly, both watching Wufei stir slightly at her startled gasp. "It's okay. It's okay."

Biting her lip, Cathy shivers.

Trowa had told her that Duo sometimes talked while sleepwalking. He'd told her that the braided man could be a bit...strange, but that he was rarely violent. He'd told her, in no uncertain terms, that if Duo acted strangely around her, she was to wake the nearest ex-pilot immediately. Just to be safe.

Frigid fingers slip up her nightshirt, nails digging into the taut flesh of her abdomen, and Cathy wants to wake Wufei, wants to scream, wants to escape. Instead, she shakes, lying in Duo's arms with her breath caught in her throat.

Help me, she cries silently. God, please, help me!

"It's okay, Ca-the-rine," he coos into her ear, not even a whisper. "Just...looking."

"W-w-why?" she wheezes, throat seizing around the words roughly. "Why?"

Duo huffs, and it sounds like a dying breath. "Because he's one of my boys."

Slowly, he disentangles himself from her, and it's like breaking through to the surface after being buried alive. She gasps and sobs, her tremors waking Wufei with a start.

"What is it?" He grabs at her, severe in a way she hasn't seen in a long time.

A glimpse of violet eyes in the shadows draws her attention, and her quivering explanation rattles in her throat like old bones. Wufei keeps shaking her - what is it? what happened? is the baby okay? - but she doesn't hear him. She can only stare after the thin, shadowed figure as it melts away like a nightmare half-remembered, until only that glassy, long-dead gaze remains in her memory.

She doesn't sleep again for the rest of the night.

:::

_When God is gone and the Devil takes hold_

_Who will have mercy on your soul?_

:::

Dull, throbbing pain drags Quatre from his dreams. Strange dreams, of the opening of gates and the rattle of an inevitable shackle. He blinks blearily in the gloom.

Duo blinks back, his expression slack, eyes staring as if into Quatre's soul. And his fingernails, blunt and bitten as was Duo's habit, dig into Quatre's chest, his hand seeming more like a pale claw, poised to bury itself in Quatre's flesh and grip his very heart.

"Duo," he whispers, though already he knows that's not quite right.

Reaching out with his soul, he feels for Duo's, the familiar, tangled mess of emotion and past. Reaches further, reaches insistently, frantically.

There is nothing.

"Are you still there?" Duo's nails bite into Quatre's skin, dull pain becoming a hot pinprick as blood wells up. "You were glorious, once. Somewhere, inside. Are you still there?"

Quatre stills, heart beating wildly against this person's fingers. Nothing. There is an eternity of nothing there.

"My boys, leaving me one by one." Leaning closer, Duo's breath fans across Quatre's face as he speaks, smelling of gunpowder and futility. "You think you can?"

"For now," Quatre whispers back, still reaching as though it may save him. "For a little while."

"You'll come back to me in the end," Duo says, releasing his friend and licking daintily at his fingertips, though his sightless, all-seeing eyes never leave Quatre's. "Everyone does."

He slips out of the bed, braid swinging behind him like a hanged man, and Quatre pulls his empathy back slowly, clumsily. It's then, with distance and resignation, that he feels it.

Vast. Inhuman. Ageless.

Whimpering, Quatre gathers his blankets close and shakes himself into restless sleep. He doesn't think of what he felt, not emotion so much as pure existence, unlike anything he's felt before, except...

Colonies explode behind his eyelids as he drifts, voids where once there had been life, reaching into eternity. A vast, inhuman, ageless emptiness he would never forget.

:::

_No wealth, no ruin, no silver, no gold_

_Nothing satisfies me but your soul_

:::

"Duo?"

Wufei stops, holding Cathy's requested box of candied pineapple loosely in one hand. The other moves to grip a sword he no longer wears.

The figure seems taller than usual, long bangs hiding his eyes from view, though his face is turned up towards the night sky. His skin gleams ivory-white, but the glow is muted somehow. Slowly, his head tilts to the side, and Wufei can see the long, thin smile, stretched tight across his face. A garotte stretched across a foolishly-bared throat, Wufei thinks idly. The world around them seems not to touch them, save for a slight wintry breeze.

"The child," Duo says softly, "thinks the moon looks like a graveyard up close."

Wufei says nothing, only clutches the box of sweets to his chest like a shield, sick shivers racing up his spine. He knows this voice...

"What do you think, Wu...fei...?" Wide eyes like twin voids peer at him from the shadows.

He knows those eyes, as well. Has seen them, a long time ago, in another life. He can feel the rasp in his throat, hear the clack of bone on bone as phantom fingers press over his mouth and nose, reach down his throat and squeeze his lungs tight...

"I th..." he trails off, swallowing against the memory of slow suffocation. He hadn't been afraid then, he wasn't afraid now.

He wasn't afraid.

Duo laughs at whatever shows in his eyes. "I do miss you," he murmurs. "My beautiful boys."

"You still have us," Wufei replies without thinking.

"Yes." The smile widens, and Wufei can feel the cold of it slice into his vulnerable throat. "I do, don't I? I'll have you all, forever, won't I?"

Duo looks back up at the moon, head falling back as though his strings had been cut. Wufei skirts around him, even, measured steps that take him to the door of his trailer, to Cathy.

He doesn't take his eyes off of Duo.

He knows, though, that it wouldn't have mattered even if he had.

:::

_Well I am Death, none can excel,_

_I'll open the door to heaven or hell._

:::

"You were so beautiful," Duo hums into Heero's ear in someone else's voice. He slips into the bed behind Heero, tugging the book from his hands and holding him close. His arms feel wrong around Heero's chest, hard like granite and twice as cold. He feels no warmth at all emanating from his old comrade, no life, no depth.

"You should be in bed," Heero says quietly, his stillness not that of a predator, but of its terrified prey. "Trowa will be missing you."

The thing wearing Duo laughs. It echoes in Heero's skull, echoes like another laugh he'd only heard a few times, vibrating in his own chest. It wasn't his laugh then, either, he supposes.

"I'm never away from Trowa," the thing whispers, teeth nipping at Heero's ear. "Not for a second."

Heero doesn't know what to say to that. Probably because he knows it to be true.

"Do you think of it sometimes, Heero? Hmm?" One hand creeps up Heero's chest to encircle his throat lightly, like a noose. Like a promise. "Dream about it? About a little girl and her little dog?"

"Nightmares," Heero grunts, and he wants to shove this thing away, but he doesn't. It wouldn't matter. This...this didn't need arms to take hold of him, didn't need a voice to tear open old wounds. You couldn't simply push it away and be done with it. "Not dreams. Never dreams. Only nightmares."

"Ahhh," the thing sighs, and it's like a parody of Duo. "See? That's why Trowa is my favorite."

It slips away without a sound, leaving only a lingering chill in Heero's soul, a night-wind dragging at the branches of a gnarled, dead tree. They creak in a familiar way, but do not crack and splinter.

With a sigh, Heero lines his shoes up neatly one last time. He turns five times, settles on his stomach, and slips into sleep.

:::

_O, Death_

_O__,__ Death_

:::

Death curls against Trowa, wrapping around his soul and squeezing tight.

"You scared Cathy the other night," he says quietly, disapprovingly.

Death blows cold air over Trowa's face. "Pointless, isn't it? Being afraid of Death."

Trowa shrugs, one arm curling around his bedmate's neck, fist clenching around its braid. "It's normal for people. It means letting go. Leaving. Unwilling change. A void. All living things naturally cling to life."

"Life." Death laughs like a stuttering heartbeat and catches the skin of Trowa's neck between its teeth, leaving an angry red mark that fades. That, too, is pointless, they both know. Trowa bears the marks of Death in deeper and more infinite places already.

"Yes," Trowa rolls over, trapping the other man beneath him. "Life. You wouldn't exist without it."

Death hisses through its teeth, dissatisfied, and Trowa wants to laugh. He doesn't though, because this aspect of his lover is not nearly so careful with fragile things as its counterpart.

This is Death, Trowa thinks suddenly. What does that make Duo?

"I'm not cruel," Death says suddenly, icy fingers clutching at Trowa's throat as they had Heero's, lightly.

Not gently. Patiently.

It can afford to be patient. Trowa isn't going anywhere.

"No," the taller man agrees. "But neither are you merciful. You just are."

"That's why you're my special boy," Death moans, wrapping Trowa in its arms like it had so many times before. "You welcomed me into your heart almost at the very beginning, and you've never let me go." It rolls them over, pressing an indulgent kiss to Trowa's forehead. "And even when the rest of my boys forsake me in favor of life, you have never forgotten me."

"Do you think Duo has?"

"What's to forget?" Slowly, Death snakes a hand between them, tracing its name over Trowa's heart. "To that child, Life and Death are one and the same."

Humming thoughtfully, Trowa snuggles down against Death, welcoming its embrace. It holds him close, like a child, and kisses his brow again.

"You are good together," it admits, eyes sliding shut as it begins to succumb to deep sleep, consciousness being dragged inexorably beneath another's. "My two most faithful...most generous priests. Many have loved me...but none so well as you."

With a sigh, it falls silent, and Trowa warms Duo with his body, falling asleep to the sound of his steady heartbeat.

He dreams of space, of dying cold and alone. He dreams of violet eyes that stare without seeing. Eyes that perhaps see more than he could fathom.

He dreams of Death, and feels nothing but relief.

:::

_M__y name is Death and the end __is here_

:::

END...?

:::

A/N - When writing the scene between Duo and Heero, this popped into my head and wouldn't get out:

"You were so beautiful," Duo hums into Heero's ear in someone else's voice. He slips into the bed behind Heero, tugging the book from his hands and holding him close. His arms feel wrong around Heero's chest, hard like granite and twice as cold. He feels no warmth at all emanating from his old comrade, no life, no depth.

"You should eat a Snickers," Heero says quietly, his stillness not that of a predator, but of its terrified prey. "You're not yourself when you're hungry."


End file.
